Evil Things Dream Too
by Randomiss
Summary: Perhaps sometimes, only sometimes, Darquesse has bad dreams too. Set shortly after the events of LSoDM.


**Evil Things Dream Too**

The world around her is frustratingly dichromatic, reds alternating with blacks alternating with reds again. It is wet and slick and feels like the inside of a giant's stomach. Of course, if it were a giant that Darquesse was trapped into, she would have torn the thing in half a lifetime ago and crawled out. But this is not a giant's stomach. It is a prison cell. It is the only sort of prison that was ever able to hold Darquesse down.

She struggles against her shackles, the strength of a thousand Faceless Ones surging through her veins, straining the cold chains over and over yet never quite uprooting the obnoxious metallic serpents. They rattle and hiss with a sound designed to make her ears bleed; the sound that all but mocks her. Ah, the humility of it. She should be out there, enjoying the feel of dead things crushing under her feet, not in here. She has never belonged in here.

 _Sure you do. You've always belonged in here. Inside me. I'm in command._

The despicable voice rings in her head, each syllable igniting a deep, ancient anger within her. The voice that sounds much like her own, only when it comes from _her_ , Darquesse hates it.

 _You will give in, sooner or later_ , Darquesse fizzles, twisting each word around her tongue so that it sounds like she is reciting some cruel, poisonous poetry. _I will have my hour under the sun._

But Valkyrie Cain only laughs, and laughs, and laughs; an ugly, tuneless sound that erupts from the core of her throat and reverberates from the invisible walls like a distasteful aria. It sounds so bloody _happy_ , it makes Darquesse nauseous. _Give me a raven's croak, a dying scream; a plea for mercy._ Those are the things Darquesse feeds upon. Those are the things that make her who she is.

But Valkyrie Cain is of a different breed. She laughs like someone who is not unkind, someone who is decent, _good_. She laughs the laugh of someone who is _free_. The sound beats Darquesse down with its simple, brutal honesty, an honesty that leaves too much room for her to doubt that she will ever have things go her way.

 _You were only ever allowed to exist in here,_ Valkyrie says in-between chuckles. _Let's face it. You just don't deserve to be let out. You don't deserve better than a cage._

A pause.

 _I could let you watch, you know. I could let you watch how the world goes on spinning without you in it. Could let you see it all through my eyes, so that each step of the way you'll know exactly what it is that you could never demolish or burn or actually_ _ **feel**_ _._

Darquesse screams at that, and pulls so hard at her chains that they scream in turn (not a dying scream, though; she is beginning to see that these chains are as much immortal as she is). She trashes about like the wounded angry beast she is, and wants nothing more than to take Valkyrie Cain between her thumb and index and squeeze until the other knows what it's like to be _trapped_ and _enslaved_ and not alive. Torn far away from all the sensations, feelings, all the blood and ash; sealed away from the death she so yearns for and loves.

But as strong as Darquesse knows she is (for she is a goddess, if not more), the chain remains intact, pulling her back to a blind, primal, low form of co-existence within the mind of another.

 _But I'll be nice_ , Valkyrie continues, all traces of laughter now gone from her voice. _I'll let you sleep._

Even reds and blacks are slowly beginning to drift away from her, the last two things that she can truly sense. Darquesse, lady and mistress of darkness, queen of the shadows and a supreme, wicked creature, feels like she's been entangled in a cocoon. She is in a cradle meant to subdue her. Each throb of the heart she once swore she did not possess rocks her whole being to sleep. And the worst she could possibly imagine happens – she begins to lose herself in the rhythm, starts falling victim to its efforts to make it feel like it is innate.

 _This is where you belong._ The voice sounds so distant. It does not scrape her ears any longer, nor does it sound unkind. _Sleep now._

She begins to feel comfortable in her own prison. And that is ultimate fall for her.

No, no, _no_! She screams her throat dry, but her screams are no longer full-blooded, and cannot be heard. They are mere echoes of a deeper subconscious, one that, too, shall be curbed by that calm, soothing voice in due time. Her roots call for her, _come deeper down_ , and oh, how she hates them for it. The body of a giant snake wraps itself around her possessively, almost perversely. It is her own self, she realizes somewhere deep down, but it makes little sense. Everything makes little sense, now. Though it is not entirely unpleasant. And so she sinks in.

The last thing she can think of before drowning in her own scaled rings is _how_. How did Valkyrie Cain become so certain of herself, so strong within?

And, catching on the border between dream and reality, almost yet not quite at the same time at which her eyes dart open and she springs up on her elbows in her bed, shaken and sweaty for the first time in a long while, the answer comes to her. _Skulduggery Pleasant._

In a rare state of doubt, Darquesse, rightful owner and wielder of the body that once contained Valkyrie Cain, allows herself a moment to scan the deepest folds of her mind. But there is no one there, no other voice. She exhales sharply, something almost relief-like catching at her throat.

"The other one is gone," she whispers to herself. "She's gone."

She jumps into the night and summons up all of her pent-up wrath (she will never admit to having any fears, so she will call them wrath instead), and sets her power loose on the little town she has been indwelling for the past few days and has not bothered memorizing the name of. She tells herself it is because she wants to, because she _can_ , certainly not because she is in need to prove something to herself, to reassure herself of the immovability of her eternal power.

 _I am in control_ , she thinks as people scream and flames consume the bleeding, rotting body of the small town. _I know no cage. I vanquished Valkyrie Cain. And I will not allow Skulduggery Pleasant to have her back._

 _Not ever._


End file.
